X and Bluesky Debut Video Offerings Amid TikTok’s Uncertain Fate

With TikTok’s future in the U.S. unclear, other social platforms are filling the void.

Platforms like Bluesky and X have just launched new features making it easier for users to view and discover vertical videos, The Verge reported Monday (Jan. 20). And soon after TikTok’s brief outage in the U.S. Sunday (Jan. 19), Instagram debuted a rival to CapCut — the video editor owned by TikTok’s parent ByteDance.

“We had to get in on the video action too,” Bluesky said as it introduced customizable feeds for videos. It lets users swipe up or down on these feeds to browse videos and create targeted feeds that only take video content from specific hashtags.

“Like any other feed, you can choose to pin these or not,” the company said in its post. “Bluesky is yours to customize.”

For its part, X on Sunday began offering a “Video Tab” to U.S. users, a feature that appears as a circular play button in the app’s bottom navigation bar.

“From there, you can explore a personalized feed of recommended videos reflecting the real-time nature of X across sports, entertainment, news and more,” the Elon Musk-owned platform wrote in its announcement.

While TikTok’s downtime was short-lived, the platform’s future in the U.S. has yet to be determined. The wildly popular app had been the target of a government ban — driven by national security concerns related to TikTok’s Chinese ownership — that was scheduled to go into effect Sunday.

TikTok did go dark for a time, but the company began to restore service when then-President-elect Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that he would sign an executive order extending the ban deadline, and pledging there would be no negative repercussions for companies that helped prevent TikTok from shutting down.

Trump also wrote that he wants the U.S. to carry a 50% stake in a joint venture, though it was not clear how this deal would be structured.

“In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service,” the company said in a statement provided to PYMNTS, thanking Trump for “providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties.”

PYMNTS looked at the effect a TikTok ban might have on creators’ brand visibility and engagement in a report last year. Fiona Co Chan, CEO and founder of Youthforia, a skincare brand with more than 190,000 followers on TikTok, told PYMNTS that even if TikTok vanished, the app’s effects on the social commerce world would remain.

“I think what won’t change is the style of content that Tiktok introduced to audiences around the world — quick, engaging, informative content that gets straight to the point,” Chan said.